Paul Chowdhry - Not PC

Self-censorship blunts some impact

‘I’ve got more fans than audience members,’ jokes Paul Chowdhry of the ratio of people in the room to cooling devices. ‘You could have one each.’ Granted, it’s not ideal circumstances in which to perform a show but Chowdhry, allowing himself censorship on some gags he felt he couldn’t do in front of 11 people, soldiered on. His show is about those things that ordinarily you can’t say; as he points out, being a British-Asian man he gets away with gags about his own ancestry but what of cultures? Well, he believes in equal opportunities and there’s no accent he can’t or won’t do so that everyone comes in for a ribbing.

This is the kind of material he’s been provoking audiences and making them laugh with on the circuit for years and it’s a pleasure to hear him create a full hour of it. Just a shame he felt he had to curtail some of the material for a small but receptive audience.

Brand new material and unscripted improvisation are his trademark. Share Paul's acute observations on subjects such as how the word 'irony' is replacing the word 'offensive' and has become the new 'PC' way of behaving distastefully. Why can he get away with putting on ethnic accents when a white person doing the same…